158 ARE SOILS ENRICHED, IMPOVERISHED, pt. in. 



which we cultivate, may be said to be on its road from 

 the hill to the sea. This is no new doctrine. Lyell 

 quotes Pythagoras for it through the medium of Ovid, 



Eluvie mons est deductus in seqnor. 



Soil, which is the disintegration or detritus of rocks 

 (I use the term rocks in the wide, geological sense), is 

 in perpetual formation over the whole surface of the 

 earth ; and from the whole surface of the earth it is in 

 perpetual movement, by the wash of the rain, to the 

 bottom of the sea. 



This paragraph was scarcely printed in the second 

 edition of this book before I had an opportunity of 

 seeing the surface-water flow from the two sides of 

 Filmere Hill, as I have supposed the soil to do. Frost 

 set in a day or two before Christmas 1853, and a great 

 quantity of snow fell. In the night of Friday, the 

 6th of January 1854, a rapid thaw began, with heavy 

 rain. I went from Eotherfield to Brookwood on 

 Saturday. Owing to the hard frost, the ground ab- 

 sorbed no water. It stood on the high road through 

 East Tisted more than a foot deep, being dammed up 

 by the cross road. Thence it flowed into the lavant 

 from Faringdon by Chawton and Maiden Lane to the 

 east of Alton into the Wey and Thames. In following 

 the high road from Tisted up the north-east side of 

 Filmere Hill, I saw a continuous stream along the 

 valley, from near Ashen Wood. Where the valley 

 was crossed by the new enclosures of West Tisted 



